Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Wolfgang Laib

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Wolfgang Laib

by John McGee

Wolfgang Laib installing Milkstone at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
(Photos: John McGee)

Kafunsho (hay fever) sufferers beware—that busy little bee Wolfgang Laib has been out gathering pollen. For this show at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT), Laib’s piled the yellow stuff into a row of small hills, spread it into squares on the floor, and stored it in glass jars. The self-taught German artist (b. 1950) revels in the refined colors and subtle scents of natural materials, constructing his minimalist sculptures from beeswax, brass, rice, marble or milk. This is his first major retrospective in Japan and features work from 1977-1999. 

Installation view of Ziggurat (2000),
The Rice Meals (1993), and The Rice
Meals for the Nine Planets (1998), 
all artworks by Wolfgang Laib

As part of the opening of this exhibition, the artist did a “Laib” (live) installation of Milkstone, the seminal piece that first brought him fame in 1977. Crouched over a thin piece of pure white marble about one meter square on the floor in the middle of the gallery, Laib poured whole milk from several one-liter cartons, filling a slight, imperceptible depression in the stone. Then he slowly worked the liquid with one finger, pushing it into a uniform pool and dragging it to the edges of the marble slab. The whole process took about five minutes, and when finished the two materials blended (visually) into one. 

Milkstone reflects several of Laib’s ongoing themes: purity and simplicity, permanence vs. impermanence, and form vs. formlessness. 

This last is visible in many pieces in this show. Pine pollen drifts on the wind, beeswax melts, milk spills. But chance never plays a part. Laib corrals these highly malleable, natural materials into artificial, usually geometric constructions. In addition to Milkstone, there are two examples of Laib’s other trademark piece: a blurry-edged square made of pollen (one is the intense yellow of dandelions and the other, the pale yellow of pines). Unlike the cold, hard white of Milkstone, these floor pieces are warm and fuzzy, like patches of diffused sunlight. 

Other sculptures reference domesticity, reproduction and ceremony via archetypal forms of houses, ziggurats, and holy offerings Laib witnessed while traveling in India and parts of Asia and the Middle East. 

Pollen stored in glass jars

Laib trained as a doctor but gave up medicine for art. With doses of mysticism, mythos (a la Joseph Beuys), and natural materials woven into his projects, however, he ends up a kind of apothecary. In fact, Laib still collects his hazelnut pollen and other materials from the small German town where he lives. Catalog photos show the sprightly artist flitting through bucolic fields alighting on flowers. And that highlights one problem: though the work’s attractive, it’s a bit sterile. Too much purity and simplicity can feel like a Pottery Barn catalog. 

Laib’s clinical approach emphasizes collection and preservation, a saved and safe world. His bee dance doesn’t lead others to the source of his reverie because he performs it inside a plastic bubble. It’s not a bad show, just one that will induce more New Age, modernist calm than buzz.

This exhibition was held Feb-Mar 2003 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT) in Kitanomaru Koen (Takebashi), Tokyo.

©2006 John McGee

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